On the Enduring Relevance of Marshall McLuhan

Reggie James, CEO of Eternal and Baukunst collective member

in conversation with Kate McAndrew, GP at Baukunst

April 8, 2024

Often at the heart of creativity lies obsession—it's that irresistible pull that takes holds of our minds and refuses to let go. In honor of these rabbit holes creatives tend to explore, we decided to ask a few members of the Baukunst collective about any of their standing obsessions. Over the next few weeks, we'll share some short interviews that detail what creative curiosities our community of creative technologists are delving into, and what you might be able to learn from their research. To start, we chatted with Eternal CEO and Baukunst collective member Reggie James.

The TikTok slang that seems to have burrowed into the mind of you and everyone you know. “Instagram face.” The rapid dissemination of world news, known by millions within mere minutes, that creates an illusion of collective omniscience. What do these things all have in common? They are all effects of what media theorist Marshall McLuhan predicted nearly sixty years prior.

Well, maybe not exactly these things. But McLuhan's core theory that a society is inevitably shaped by the technology that surrounds it, made famous in The Medium is the Massage, continues to prove its prescience. This is the lure that first caught Reggie James' interest, who is so deep in research about McLuhan, the theorist’s own grandson Andrew (also a media theorist) deemed James “an official grandson of Marshall McLuhan.”

Baukunst's own Kate McAndrew sat down with James to learn more about his obsession, what McLuhan’s theories have taught him about expression of identity as a founder, and the immense responsibility he puts on himself to be a thoughtful and studied pioneer of new technologies.

Baukunst: Tell us about what started your fascination with McLuhan.

James: I think I was on Twitter—classically—maybe 2018, 2019? I was tweeting about how when you realize everything is TV, your entire structure of product changes. And if you can break down why something is also TV when it's not TV, you'll understand the thing. And then my friend was like, "Yeah, you gotta read McLuhan."

During COVID I went on this retreat with a bunch of other young tech people to Maine for a month. One of the folks there is a really good friend, Aaron Z Lewis. He's also a really big McLuhan head. We would go on these long two to three hour walks in the woods just talking about, what did literacy do to us as people? What did radio do to us? What did TV do to us? I have a deep desire to understand that [idea that] we shape our tools and in turn, our tools shape us. And if we want to be good founders and good technologists, I think one moral responsibility you have is the realization that whatever you build will affect people in unintended consequences.

How might you educate those leaders? How can you be the best steward of technology, but also be the best utilizer of technology? Then becoming friends with Andrew McLuhan just ratcheted my obsession up a whole other notch. He'll send me things from the family archives that aren't really out there. So then you get to see more about how the ideas even come about.

"We would go on these really long two to three hour walks in the woods just talking about, what did literacy do to us as people? What did radio do to us? What did TV do to us? I have a deep desire to understand that [idea that] we shape our tools and in turn, our tools shape us."

What about McLuhan's theories resonates most with you?

Obviously everyone has some understanding of The Medium is the Massage, right? And I think that's super valid, but there's a larger book called Understanding Media. It's got these chapters around understanding radio, TV, and really understanding the isolation of the senses that technology brings upon us.

I was chatting with a friend recently about how sensuality is actually not what we can see. It's always about feeling, whether it's music, whether it's touch. And to increase our sort of consumption of sex, sensuality, we often close our eyes. But pornography is purely visual. And that's why pornography is not at all sensuous. That actually really disrupts our thinking about sex. It's very McLuhan because he often deals with the sensorial. It deals with the effects on our senses, and then how that changes us.

I think there is nothing more human than understanding the effects on our senses. And then, as a function of that, what we desire, how we perceive. And technology, even our ability to [conduct a Zoom call] is a highlighting of what needs to happen with our senses in order to have this interaction. There's a hyper relationship on our eyes, a hyper relationship on our ears. But you can't touch me, you can't smell me, but that's not important for this, right? So it's all of these things.

And so I think when you really boil McLuhan down, it's really about that sensorial understanding. And thus, when we isolate, when we create appendages, when we extend, what does that do? And how does that create these sort of reinforcing loops? That's why I think more business-minded folks need to read McLuhan, because it really gets to like understanding why Instagram is so powerful, or why Spotify is so pervasive, right? Spotify and the idea of streaming music is so insane because it took something that used to be isolated. In the past, you could only get music at certain points in a ritual because it was seen as that powerful. And now we can flood ourselves with this sort of sensory attack nonstop, right?

“I think more business-minded folks need to read McLuhan, because it really gets to understanding why Instagram is so powerful, or why Spotify is so pervasive.”

Obviously that does something to us. And I think the fear of uncovering what that does is kind of what keeps people away—it's almost like you want to stay willfully ignorant—but you can only stay willfully ignorant for so long before a truck hits you. And I think we're going to get hit by a truck.

You mentioned to us having an interest in the spiritual angle to his work. Can you share more with us about that?

I grew up Christian, I still consider myself Christian. In [McLuhan's book] The Medium and the Light, it's really interesting to see how many religious analogies and examples he utilizes. I think it gave me a sort of confidence to not shy away from that in my own work. Because when you have the privilege to utilize work as a way that you see and want to affect the world in some way, to then limit some of your beliefs or value systems and not utilize that in your work becomes a new type of burden. Seeing the way McLuhan utilized his Catholicism in the way he viewed his media practice, and being able to deconstruct certain things within Catholicism, and really put a light on, is this even good? Are we doing this the right way?

I think it has given me a sort of comfort to do that. For example, I'm kind of on this quest of [thinking about], what was tech's Original Sin these past like 30 years? That's kind of my current obsession, to deconstruct that a little bit. And that book really shows a lot of his wrestling with his media practice and faith, how they intersect. Wrestling just in the sense that he was really utilizing both devices. And I mean, it's not like Eternal's a Christian AI game [laughs], but I do think I'm able to look at Eternal, and my writing, and look at critique on other technology with a certain perspective of, is this how it's meant to be? Is this spiritually good for us?

We should be able to ask ourselves if certain things are spiritually good for us. I think a lot of technology is not spiritually good for us and someone has to voice that. Or else people get abused. Plain and simple, people will just get abused, because they're not even made aware of how they're being abused. It's like asbestos in the walls. Until someone says, “Asbestos isn't good,” you'll just innocently think, “Yeah, there's asbestos in the wall.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On the Enduring Relevance of Marshall McLuhan

Further Reading